Reflective Intro Outline

Scratch what I said in my previous post, I'm going with "The Ocean State Spirit" as my theme.

-The entries are in order of how applicable they are to the theme and two entries that will be most improved upon will be listed last

SNS-Showed how I can adapt to the differences and preferences of other writers to create a piece that appears cohesive and has one distinct purpose.

Blog-Showed consistency as a writer, focused on my audience and what it would take to maintain a following from other bloggers.

Wikitravel-Showed my ability to write with user usefulness and utility in mind, focused on detail and formality to fit the guidelines of a particular ecology.

Website redesign- Showed creativity and familiarity with website aesthetics, focused on efficiency and accessibility for users and importance of symmetry within a site

Options for Portfolio Theme

I thought it was pretty difficult coming up with a theme that tied all my work together that I've done this semester, but I finally landed on something. The Ocean State Culture was a title and theme I found to be catchy and applicable. I haven't really been able to think of anything else that I can consider for my theme so I'm going to go with it. I think that the two projects I'm focusing on, my blog and my wikitravel site, do a good job giving insight into why certain things are the way they are in this state.

My Project Choices

I'm going to choose my enthusiast blog and my social networking site for projects to expand. I feel like I worked the hardest on these two projects and enjoyed them the most. My plans for both are as follows:

Enthusiast Blog
-work on catchier titles
- link blog posts together better
- tighten up grammatically

Social Networking Site
- improve the content of my blog post
- make the discussion board more interactive
-improve aesthetically

Kimball-Web Portfolios

Here are the major points that I took away from Kimball's piece, all of which are mentioned early on in the text and continue throughout.

1) Portfolios should be reflective in the sense that they should depict challenges you face, how you overcame them, and what you ultimately learned from each submission.

2) The standards of your work should somehow be explained and how you fulfilled those standards should be evident in your work.

3) You must present the portfolio in a way that will make sense and enables the audience to draw conclusions from it. You must create the portfolio with audience in mind.

Looking Back in my Cause Site Experience

I thought this was a great experience to be able to look back on. It was probably one of my favorite assignments in any writing class I've been apart of, but granted this is a very different kind of writing course. I was very pleased with our final product and am glad that it went as smoothly as it did. Group projects can sometimes be more daunting than beneficial, but I thought this was a project well suited for teamwork and input from other people. I thought that this project incorporated many different ways to be creative and to ultimately get the major points of the cause across through the tools Ning offers.

Using Feedback

I thought that our feedback was helpful at times and inaccurate at others. I think it's difficult to give feedback on something that you haven't really worked and are unfamiliar with, so the feedback group responding to us isn't at fault. I moved around a couple things on the page, cut down on the welcome note, and made a few adjustments to my personal page. As for the aesthetics, we pretty much got carved by the feedback group, but I see our layout as something that suits our page well, and my group mates agree. We will work on our blog to make it work better as a whole and I will try to find a way to make our mission statement a little more direct and specific, although I think where it is now is good because it is general enough to capture differences in focus of each member.

The Process of Creating a Cause Website

This is definitely my favorite project of the semester. I like how I can directly interact with my group mates through the site, as opposed to just working toward on it together like with the Website redesign. It seemed like a pretty overwhelming project, but when you put four heads together that contribute with an ample effort, it actually turns into a rewarding experience. It feel it combines your overall creativity and the ability to achieve a desired goal better than any project we've completed thus far. I initially wasn't too fond of the way Ning looked and operated, but as usual, I have grown accustomed to it and enjoyed many of the tools that they have to offer. I really like the layout once you have chosen which features you want to include. It makes editing and creating on the site easy and efficient.